132 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVII 
THE CONDOR 
A Magazine of 
Western Ornithology 
Published Bi-Monthly by the 
Cooper Ornithological Club 
J. GR1NNELL, Editor. Berkeley. California 
HARRY S. SWARTH. Associate Editor 
J. EVGENE LAW I _ . M 
W. LEE CHAMBERS } Bus,ness Managers 
Hollywood, California: Published May 15, 1915 
SUBSCRIPTION KATES 
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countries in the International Postal Union. 
COOPER CLUB DUES 
Two Dollars per year for members residing in the 
United States. 
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countries. 
Claims for missing or imperfect numbers should be 
made within thirty days of date of issue. 
Subscriptions and Exchanges should be sent to the 
Business Manager. 
Manuscripts for publication, and Books and Papers 
for review, should be sent to the Editor. 
Advertising Rates on application. 
EDITORIAL NOTES AND NEWS 
The annual Cooper Club roster published 
in this issue shows a present membership 
of 6 honorary, 4 life, and 535 active mem- 
bers, considerably more than for any previ- 
ous year. It is requested that any errors in 
the roster be promptly reported to one or 
the other of the Club secretaries. 
At least two active ornithologists are 
directing their attention to Alaska this year. 
Mr. F. Seymour Hersey, of Taunton, Massa- 
chusetts, has left Seattle for St. Michael, on 
Behring Sea, to collect specimens, and espe- 
cially to take photographs, during the sum- 
mer, in the interests of Bent’s “Life Histo- 
ries of North American Birds”. Mr. Hersey 
will thus be working from the same base 
that Nelson did thirty-five years ago. Mr. 
George Willett has left California to spend 
another summer on Forrester Island, south- 
eastern Alaska, where a very great deal 
doubtless yet remains to be learned con- 
cerning the hordes of water birds which re- 
sort to that isolated locality for the nest- 
ing season. We hope that he succeeds in 
finding the eggs of the long-sought-for Mar- 
bled Murrelet! 
Those of us who have the museum instinct 
well developed are often pained to read in 
a collector’s narrative that some rare speci- 
men has been thrown away as being “too 
far gone to skin”. There is increasing need 
for osteological material, and it is a shame 
that any perfectly good specimens for such 
purposes should be destroyed. It is a very 
simple matter to remove the major portion 
of the soft parts from a dead bird, wrap in 
the feet and head with a little thread or 
twine, and hang it up to dry; or else to 
roll it in dry cornmeal, which will retard 
decay, and ship it at once to some museum. 
Of course a tag should be affixed, giving the 
sex, as ascertained by dissection, exact local- 
ity, date, and name of collector. Bodies of 
skinned birds might well be saved in similar 
fashion. As previously stated in these col- 
umns, it is becoming more and more incum- 
bent upon the collector of birds to justify 
the privilege he enjoys, by making the 
greatest possible use of the material he 
gathers. 
On another page of this issue Mr. A. C. 
Bent does American ornithology an excel- 
lent service by correcting an important 
error in identification, by reason of which 
error a record of occurrence far beyond the 
normal range of the species in question has 
stood in our literature for many years. We 
can see no reason for attempting to defend 
the perpetrator of any erroneous record, 
where such has been made without exhaust- 
ing every reasonable means of verification. 
As Mr. Bent says, it is lamentably difficult 
to eliminate a faulty record from our litera- 
ture. It is vastly better to make every pos- 
sible effort toward accurate determination 
of both the circumstances of capture and 
the identity of the species before venturing 
into print. In this day of many museums, 
and with willing experts whose services may 
be elicited in making comparisons of speci- 
mens, it looks as though we ought to be able 
to escape such blunders. 
It is with the deepest regret that we an- 
nounce the death of an active Cooper Club 
man, F. E. Newbury. This took place at his 
home in San Francisco on March 16, 1915. 
Mr. Newbury came to California from the 
East in 1903, and located in San Francisco 
as an optician, in which profession he was 
very successful. We learn through Mr. 
Harry S. Hathaway of Providence, R. I., a 
long-time friend of Newbury, that the latter 
was a man of quiet, unassuming manner, 
who loved his friends, home and family 
above all else. He was an agreeable com- 
panion and a hard worker in the field. He 
studied birds and collected birds’ eggs, 
chiefly for recreation, and had gathered a 
not large, but decidedly choice series of 
personally collected sets. 
Harry K. Pomeroy, an active member of 
the Cooper Ornithological Club died at his 
home in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on January 
27, 1915. Pomeroy was born in Lockport, 
